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Arteezy: "I am Planning to Take a Year off to Play Dota Full-Time."

The North American prodigy, Artour "Arteezy" Babaev was interviewed by Virtus Pro about his future in Dota 2, the reasons the Chinese teams are currently ahead of the western ones and more...

Hi, how are you doing?Hi, I am fine. Thank you for the interview.
I have never done this before; it is cool to answer some questions.

You are a student at the moment, right?
What are you planning to do after you finish your studies? Are you going to go
to college or you have some other plans?I am in my last year now, I will graduate
at the end of June. I am planning to take a year off to play Dota full-time.
Depending on the results I will decide whether or not to take more time off to
play full-time, or go back to school hoping to combine both if it is
possible.

Many professional players, like Dendi,
EternaLEnVy and others, consider you as one of the best mid players in the
world. Why are you not a part of any team? You used to play for Kaipi before
they become Speed Gaming. You even won MLG playing for them.They must be joking! (laughs) I really
hated the fact that I could not play Dota since I am a full-time student.
However, lately I have been playing 4-5 days a week at times when European
teams normally practise. It is most likely that I will be joining a team in a
month or so.

Have you received any offers other than
from Dignitas and Kaipi?A lot of them! Can’t even remember how many
(laughs).

You have an unusual name. Are your parents
from CIS? Do you speak Russian?My parents and I are from Tashkent,
Uzbekistan. We have Russian and Armenian roots.
I used to speak both languages, but my Russian has degraded so much
because I had no speaking practice. I can’t speak it but I still understand
some of it.

What is your favourite hero?My favourite hero is Naga Siren, but they
keep changing her all the time. Also, I spent a lot of time practising my
Tinker, Shadow Fiend and Templar Assassin.

If for some reason you could not play mid,
what position would you play?I would play something with great 1vs1
potential, carry or offlane probably. I am too egoistic to play the support
role, I am afraid.

Do you follow the competitive scene at all?
What are your favourite teams from each region? Do you think that Chinese Dota
is the strongest?I barely watch any pro games. I used to
watch them when I was playing for Kaipi/SPG. I simply do not have time to watch
others play. I would rather play myself. To be honest, I do not have a
favourite team either. I just respect good play.

Chinese are stronger now because they
started to use some heroes (Pugna, DK, Venomancer, Bristleback) earlier than
the rest of the world. But the west is very close. Skill gap is not as big as
it was during The International 2. Western Dota has done an amazing job
catching up.

What do you think about VP`s new roster?Honestly, I can’t say anything good or bad
about the new roster. It would be great if their results can speak for
themselves.

What is your dream team? And in what dream
team would you like to play?It is very difficult to make a dream team
because you need to consider not only players’ skill, but also their character.
I do not think that I can name my dream team, but I would love to play with
Puppey and pieliedie. Both of them are great supports.

Do you earn money streaming or you just do
it for fun?I do not stream very often, because I am
busy with my school stuff. But when I find some time to stream I do it just for
fun. I can’t imagine a pub game without streaming and fooling around with
viewers (laughs).

What is your MMR? Do you play Ranked only?Yes, I play ranked only and my MMR is 6128.

A lot of people think that Earth Spirit and
Broodmother are imbalanced in public games. Do you agree with that?Earth Spirit is a weird hero, but you can
counter him easily with Black King Bar. He creates so much chaos on the map,
which makes it so demoralizing to play against him, especially if you have to
carry 1vs5. He is like Doom, they both are very good at shutting down a single
target. As for Broodmother – I do not really care. She is useless against any
organized team, and very often, she fails to farm.

Thank you very much for the interview. Do
you want to say something to our readers or someone else?Thank you too. I want to say hi to my Sad
Boys and subscribe to my Twitter and my twitch channel
twitch.tv/arteezy .

The interview was originally conducted by Virtus Pro and translated by 2P's Pavel Jakovlev.